Eruption (Yellowblown™ Book 1) (33 page)

“Mrs. Perch, I’m going to go get something out of my closet
.”

“I’m sure they don’t mean any harm
.”

“I’m sure they don’t,”
Boone said.

Mom patted her mouth with her napkin and headed for the front door. Sara and I looked at each other then bolted after her.

The couple stood at the truck, now looking toward us with lowered chins. “Hi there. We’re Bob and Vicky Trenton,” the middle-aged man offered with a tentative smile. His legs bowed like he’d been a cowboy before arriving in rural Indiana. “We live down closer to Gardenburg but far enough out that we’re still on a well. Our power hasn’t come back on like yours and we’re out of water.”

Bob cocked his head to one side as Boone
strolled up next to Mom and all but directly in front of me. “Hello.” Bob wiped his hands on dark jeans with a white line down the center of the leg, presumably from a long history of ironing, juxtaposed with a hint of grunge from needing to be laundered. “We tried the river water but there’s cows upstream. My cousin remembered there were springs up here and I wondered if we could fill up our jugs. We won’t be any trouble.”

“Of course you can,” Mom said. “Take it right out of the pipe there. You should still
add a little chlorine or boil it or something.” She smacked her hands to her cheeks then winced from the pressure on her forgotten root canal. “What am I thinking? You could use the garden hose since the power is on.”

“The spring will be fine. Thank you….”

“Candy. Candy Perch. This is Boone, a friend of ours from out of town, and my daughters, Violet and Sara. Girls, maybe we can give them a hand. My, you do have quite a few jugs,” she said when they started unloading from the bed of the truck.

“Mrs. Perch,” Boone muttered. “Do you know these people?”

“No,” she said, “but they’re asking for water, not the Crown Jewels.”

We chatted with the Trenton
s and made quick work of the containers as the friendly couple described the assortment of animals they kept on their farmette. All needed water. Boone tracked them like a guard dog while he helped.

Mom stood with her hands on her hips to watch the white tailgate of the pickup disappear down the slope of our drive. “They se
em like good people,” she said.

Dad pulled in at dusk. Mom
, who’d been lurking near windows at the front of the house, ran out the door as if he’d been gone a week instead of one night. “Glad to see the porch light on,” he said as he gave her a big hug and a loud, smacking kiss. “Selling the x-ray machine should keep it on a little longer. I stopped down at Dad’s house real quick. They were about like I expected. Wow,” he said, turning to see Sara and me and Boone all surrounding him. “I don’t usually get this big a welcoming committee.” He pointed at the solar panel. “That thing charging yet?”

“Yes
, sir,” Boone said. “Not much sun today, but we might be able to test the charge tomorrow.”

Dad sighed. “
Tomorrow we’re going to move my parents up here.”

“Why?” Sara asked. “The power is back on.”

“Well, shortcake, they aren’t as spry as they used to be. Plus, there’s people starting to get a little desperate. I’d feel better with all of us together, under one roof.”

“Two people showed up here for water today,” Sara said.

Mom rolled her eyes. “They were so appreciative. Boone didn’t trust them, but I could tell they were good people.”

“How did they know we had springs?”

“The man said his cousin knew.”

“Huh. Our springs must be famous
,” he said. “No mail in the box. Did you get it already?” 

“No, I forgot to tell you, the
post master told the paper they might come out once a week, but people in the boondocks should figure on picking up the mail in Gardenburg. The cost of gas is too high.”

“Can they do that?”
I asked.

“Apparently
, they already did.”
 

 

We were preparing to head down to Grampa’s the next morning when two cars pulled up with their trunks full of the big clear jugs for office water coolers. Boone went on a recon mission with Dad. They came back as the visitors went through the laborious job of transferring water from a smaller container into the larger ones that didn’t fit under the pipe.

When
our guests were gone, Mom, Dad and Sara loaded up in Mom’s SUV. I joined Boone in his truck for the short drive. We found Grandma in a kitchen chair, ready to continue the battle Dad had glossed over last night. For the second time in twenty-four hours, I felt bad for her. Moving from this house must tear at her fifty years worse than my leaving my dorm room had. As if the threat of uprooting wasn’t bad enough, Grandma expected her house to be broken into the instant they vacated.

E
asygoing Dad insisted, in his water-erodes-rock style, and got his way just as Western Case College’s President Ellis had, though I think Grampa’s quiet “Now Bittie, this’ll be easier and safer for all of us,” contributed to her disgruntled agreement.

Boone offered to stay in the vacated house to ease Grandma’s worries.

Dad gave him a sidelong look. “What, and have you lounging down here while I dig springs and run off the riffraff? No dice, cowboy.”

“Well, he needs some place to sleep, Matt,” Mom said.

I wasn’t sure if she wanted him out of the house to get him away from me or to give us a place to rendezvous.

“We’ll figure something out,” Dad insisted. “Part of the reason we’re doing this is to keep everybody together.
”

We all pitched in to help them pack.
I watched a heavily laden Boone pause in the driveway to look in the metal-sided pole building built for Grampa’s dump truck and excavators. It now sheltered his old camper trailer and Grandma’s sedan.

He
asked some questions when he returned. Grampa pawed through a kitchen drawer for a set of keys. He led Boone and Dad to the trailer. I propped the back door open as I packed the pantry, shamelessly spying. Still stalking Boone Ramer in my weird way, I supposed. I heard the rumble of masculine conversation and the slam of exterior hatches closing.

The
trailer had provided hours of childhood entertainment when Sara and I played house in the rounded, wood-paneled interior. We would set the table and pretend to cook meals on the minuscule stove. She’d force a doll to nap while I unfolded motor club maps to plan trips. I hadn’t understood the crisscrossing squiggly lines beyond the representation of routes to places other than home.

After ten minutes, e
aten alive by curiosity, I wandered out to the shed. The camper seemed smaller than my memory, its inside darkened to haunted house levels by the confines of the garage. Blue gingham curtains sported spiderwebs and dust Grandma would never have allowed to accumulate back in the days when they travelled.

“So the refrigerator can run
on propane?” Dad asked.

“Sure,” Grampa said. “Or you can plug the whole rig into electricity. You got your water tank under here and a small water heater. That and the furnace take propane. Here’s the thermostat for your heat.
’course I had it all winterized years ago, so the water system will need some flushing.”

“Probably best to leave the plumbing alone, at least this year,” Boone suggested.

“Are we going camping?” I teased.

“Only in our driveway,” Dad said. “This little rig is a good way
to put the solar panel to use since the batteries connect right up to it. We’ll have refrigeration as long as we have propane, and a stove and oven. And some extra bunks.”

I nodded as I opened the tiny refrigerator.
A poof of musty air assaulted my nose. I suppose a miniscule harbor of cold improved on no cold at all, but food for a household of seven? In here?

Grampa produced some sort of
battery-operated air pump out of Grandma’s car to make the tires of the trailer go from saggy to perky. As usual, Boone took charge of the heavy equipment. He backed Grampa’s aged but pristine pickup truck into the garage bay and aligned the hitch to the trailer’s tongue in one attempt. The rear end of the pickup settled toward the cement pad when Dad cranked the jack to lower the hitch onto the ball. Boone plugged a wire from the trailer into a socket on the truck.

“Take it easy pulling out,” Grampa said. “Been sitting long enough those brakes might be locked.”

“Yes, sir. Let me know if the lights are working, too.”

“Will do.”

I resisted the bizarre urge to climb up in the cab next to my Nebraska rancher. He started the truck then rolled the driver’s window down so he could hang his head out to look behind him, definitely the cutest All-American boy I’d ever seen.

Grampa gave him a thumbs up. “Hot dang. Brake lights are good.”

I heard the emergency brake click off and the engine rev slightly. The camper creaked forward. “Slick as grease,” Boone called.

Grampa smiled, proud of his equipment. “That’ll come in handy,” he said
as Boone stopped twenty feet down the driveway. “Propane tanks were full when I stored her. The furnace sips it.”

“It’s awesome
,” I agreed. “You’ll be handy, too. We’ve got a lot of projects going at our house. We need somebody to keep everyone straight.”

“I’m pretty good at
managing projects.” He looked around the homestead he and Grandma had made together. His lips pressed in a tight line for a moment before he strode toward the back door.

We finished loading stuff out of the house, including Grandma’s impressive assortment of canned goods
, since, according to her, these would be the first things stolen if left behind. Boxed jars of green and red and yellow took up the entire rear of Mom’s SUV, with the seats folded down.

Grandma
clung to Dad’s arm as she limped to Boone’s truck—entrusted to Dad for the short drive—while Grandpa locked the house and the garage where they’d parked her car for now. Mom had already left with Sara, and Dad followed with his parents, leaving me to be just where I wanted. Grandpa’s truck bobbed with the weight of the trailer behind it. Boone tapped the brakes several times in the driveway. Something on the trailer squealed in protest but must have responded acceptably because he pulled out on the road. The truck motor roared gently, coaxed into accelerating on the uphill pull.

I slipped over to the center of the seat like a girl on a date with her farmer boyfriend. Boone put his hand on my leg without looking at me
. He watched his side mirrors as he nursed the rig up the narrow road toward The Perch.

“What the heck?” I muttered when I saw Dad
park at the entrance of our driveway.

Sara ran down to meet us
. Boone rolled down his window. “Dad said to tell you there’s, like, three cars of people up there getting water. He said everything is fine, to wait here until they clear out.” Message delivered, she ran back up the drive, tendrils from her perfect ponytail trailing behind her head.

Boone set the brake and turned off the motor. He didn’t say anything
. His heedfulness to the driveway held me silent as he returned his hand to my leg and rubbed his thumb on the inside of my thigh.

You’re a gift I’m not going to get to keep
. The thought slammed into my brain so aggressively I feared I’d spoken out loud.

Boone didn’t change his posture. He watched the first car exit the driveway but, I realized, he drifted
beyond this truck, outside of Indiana, thinking about people I didn’t know and a place I’d never been. My hand flattened over his. I memorized the moment again, pressed my palm down and closed my eyes to focus on the slight answering squeeze of his strong fingers.

Despair bubbled and threatened to gasp out of my throat. I swallowed, forced my eyes open
to study his silhouette in the afternoon light.

Look at the world
right here, right now, Violet
, I thought as the second car meandered down the drive, a belt squealing at the turn.

Boone
rubbed his chin, generating the rasp of unshaven whiskers.